This research with middle school students from Kentucky (KY) and Nevada (NV) provides a snapshot of students' spatial-scientific understandings as we explored how well students understand lunar-related content, both spatially and scientifically, after receiving instruction with similar curricular Earth-Space content. Utilizing a lens of spatial…

This exploratory case study affirmed the merit of using science fiction-inspired story writing to help Saudi Arabian Grade 10 female students learn science. Recognizing that teacher-centered rote learning was not reaching her rural students in the western part of Riyadh Province, the female teacher in this case switched to the constructivist…

Dynamic assessment (DA) seeks to understand learners' abilities that are still developing by embedding mediation (i.e., contingent forms of assistance) into the assessment process. To date, DA studies have been carried out primarily in contexts focused on language learning. However, in content classrooms (e.g., science, math), English learners…

The goal of this work is to build a low cost pedagogical device able to improve the comprehension of weather phenomena for African students in particular and in general for students across the world. This experimental and didactic device can be seen as an easy teaching tool to measure meteorological and climatic data. This structure is called a…

Researchers have typically identified and characterized teachers' knowledge bases (e.g., pedagogical content knowledge and subject matter knowledge) in an effort to improve enacted instructional strategies. As shown by the Refined Consensus Model (RCM), understanding teacher learning, beliefs, and practices is predicated on the interconnections of…

Imagine two groups of students in your physics class or lab. In Group A, the students each take on a different task but invest an equal amount of time, energy, and effort in what they do. For example, one student might be the note-taker, while another operates the calculator, computer, or experimental apparatus, and a third keeps everyone on track…

This work presents an immersive molecular simulation tool (Manta) based on virtual reality technology, which enables students to explore "real" molecular structures and chemical reactions on-the-fly. Manta can work as a virtual classroom and even a playground for chemistry education, where students learn the progress of chemical…

Teaching science can provide opportunities for young children to explore and learn about the world around them and, equally important, to support children's language development. Yet, recent research suggests that children's access to science education is limited, especially in early and elementary education. Since language is critical to…

Many conversations surrounding improvement of large-enrollment college science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) courses focus primarily (or solely) on changing instructional practices. By reducing dynamic, complex learning environments to collections of teaching methods, we neglect other meaningful parts of a course ecosystem…

Based on the development of education in Indonesia today, teachers still teach in ways that make students memorize lessons. A learning model is needed that can support students to think critically. One of the learning models that can support students to think critically is through guided discovery learning model with argument mapping. This study…

Genetics is a core topic in the biology curriculum of many countries. Learning genetics is difficult for multiple reasons, including the need to reason about complex mechanisms--and to link mechanisms--that occur at different time and space scales. Previous research in genetics education explores students' understandings of inheritance patterns or…

Equal access to an instructor's time and attention can be a barrier experienced by many underrepresented minorities. An instructor's own biases will determine the nature of their interaction with students, and even well-meaning instructors can interact with students in differential ways, which might prevent certain students from having access to…

Minorities' languages face transformation processes and struggle against many social and linguistic limitations. Education systems in these languages are not optimal to promote the teaching of ancestral knowledge and scientific research. This is the case of Kichwa, an Ecuadorian native language that more than half-million people speak with…

Studies maintain that computational thinking (CT) is associated with science content and scientific processes as well as with many disciplines. It is thought that designing teaching processes in which science and CT processes take place together makes science learning more meaningful. With this in mind, in this study, the researchers integrated…

To effectively address socioscientific issues (SSI), science teachers need to obtain a certain level of pedagogical content knowledge for SSI teaching (SSI-PCK). In this study, therefore, pre-service science teachers (PSTs) were provided an SSI teacher education program (SSI-TEP) based on the SSI-PCK framework and their development and challenges…